I recently went on a hiking trip up into the Rhinog mountains in Snowdonia national park in North Wales. The original image posted is of an old boating lake i snapped. I decided to bring it to life and tried to imagine what the lake would have been like centuries ago when it was in use.

The final size is about 3500 pixels wide. Time taken about 6 hours.

Final Image

http://www.mindseyegraphics.net/images/rhinogs_web.jpg

Original Photo
http://www.mindseyegraphics.net/images/final_orig.jpg

Enjoy.

Timser

RiKToR

08-27-2008, 09:44 PM

Its good. When I first looked at it I thought it was just a sky replace so the only thing that doesnt quite work is the sky. The reason for that is the god rays are a bit much and there are no specular highlights on the water to match such lighting. Other then that its basic but good.

Timser

08-28-2008, 05:06 AM

Its good. When I first looked at it I thought it was just a sky replace so the only thing that doesnt quite work is the sky. The reason for that is the god rays are a bit much and there are no specular highlights on the water to match such lighting. Other then that its basic but good.

Thanks for the comments RiKToR. I have toned down the god rays in the sky and to help with perspective i have positioned them behind the mountain also. I have added a subtle reflection into the water now and made the god ray light source more prominant in the reflection.

I have attached the full size image for the detail:

http://www.mindseyegraphics.net/images/Final_Large.jpg

chrike

08-28-2008, 06:30 AM

damn the full size image is huuuuuge. have to scroll quite a bit to even get to the reply window here XD
I think you did a great job with that except with the god rays.
The castle blends in the overall image very well, so does the new sky and compositionally it's really nice, too!
So really good job on all that. However, there are two things that popped into my eye immediately:
The castle reflection on the water looks like a vertical photoshop blur. The water surface right next to it shows some really nice ripples and detail and furthermore it distorts the reflection of the hill more horizontally which gives a nice indication of subtle movement on the water.
The second thing is the god rays.
If I was you I'd probably get rid of them completely. They indicate a really strong light source / the sun being in the top centre part of the image.
Your original plate, in contrast to that, was shot at a completely overcast day. So there's flat lighting all over the place. Which makes it really charming imho.
However, it doesnt really make much sense that the god rays break through the clouds only at that particular point (looks quite constructed if u know what i mean) and nowhere else.
Long story short: If you want to keep the rays I think you should lower their intensity and have them coming through more randomly scattered in the sky and hence patches of light areas on the ground :)